A US human rights group says it is suing private security firm Blackwater for unspecified damages for war crimes and wrongfully killing Iraqi civilians.

The Center for Constitutional Rights is acting on behalf of an injured survivor and three families of men killed by Blackwater guards on 16 September.

The Iraqi government said the incident in which 17 people died was unprovoked. Blackwater denies firing without cause.

The case has put a spotlight on private military contractors in Iraq.

BLACKWATER USA FACTS Founded in 1997 by a former US Navy Seal Headquarters in North Carolina One of at least 28 private security companies in Iraq Employs 744 US citizens, 231 third-country nationals, and 12 Iraqis to protect US state department in Iraq Provided protection for former CPA head Paul Bremer Four employees killed by mob in Falluja in March 2004

What happened Profile: Blackwater USA The action claims Blackwater "created and fostered a culture of lawlessness amongst its employees, encouraging them to act in the company's financial interests at the expense of innocent human life," the centre said in a statement.

this is the kind of stuff that is going to bring down America the Beautiful. Is there not a single liberal entity who is on the side of U.S. of A? We are fighting a war on terror on many fronts. It's Americans against the world, Press, Terrorists, and [insert your group here]. Our Founding Fathers would drag the current state of affairs and snuff the life out of it.

Vince is an experience litigator and innovative advocate who knows how to turn cases into causes,” said Michael Ratner, CCR President.

At the ACLU he also litigated Dasrath v. Continental Airlines on behalf of plaintiffs removed from an airplane shortly after 9/11 because they were perceived to be Arab or Muslim. Mr. Warren coordinated the ACLU’s Hurricane Katrina Response Team; established the ACLU Native American Working Group to advance civil rights and combat educational discrimination in the Dakotas; and created and chaired the New York Indigent Defense Litigation Roundtable.

Mr. Warren has also worked as a staff attorney in the criminal defense division of the Legal Aid Society in Brooklyn, the single largest provider of criminal defense services for the City of New York. His public service includes working as a judicial law clerk in the U.S. District Court in New York; monitoring the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Hearings in South Africa under the auspices of the National Lawyer’s Guild; and serving as a volunteer with the Haitian Refugee Center in Miami.

Beyond the courtroom, Mr. Warren was a leading African American voice for affirmative action, collaborating with the African American Policy Forum to launch a national public education project about local policies to remedy systemic discrimination.

Mr. Warren will oversee all of the Centers legal, advocacy and education work in protecting and advancing the rights guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including the Centers dockets on Guantánamo, Government Misconduct, International Human Rights, Racial & Economic Justice and Corporate Accountability.

Vincent Warren, CCR

To the rest of the world, Guantánamo is a symbol of overreaching presidential abuse of power, of arrogance, hypocrisy, lawlessness, and torture. To the Bush administration, it is merely a public relations disaster and, as such, it must be fixed, not by providing fair hearings to the detainees and ensuring that due process and the laws of the land are respected, but by mounting a vigorous and well-orchestrated PR campaign in response. One of the most damning documents on Guantánamo to be produced is known as the Seton Hall report and showed, analyzing the governments own documents, that 92 percent of the people at Guantánamo were not Al Qaeda fighters and that 55 percent had been found by the military to not have committed any hostile act against the U.S. or our allies.

The Center for Constitutional Rights has represented the detainees at Guantánamo from the very beginning. We have visited men driven to despair with less and less faith that they would ever see justice, men who were turned over for enormous bounties to the U.S. because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, or men who were fleeing the conflict, or men who were cooks, goatherders and other minor actors swept up and locked away, now lost to their families and branded terrorists forever. At most, five percent of the men at Guantánamo were captured by U.S. forces. In five years, only ten people out of 786 at Guantánamo have ever been charged with a crime; only one ever went before a Military Commission, and not a single one is currently charged.

A US human rights group says it is suing private security firm Blackwater for unspecified damages for war crimes and wrongfully killing Iraqi civilians.

I am not a lawyer or ever worked for one, but I understand the concept of "standing", which is a necessary precursor to a suit.

Unless this group has already made a successful argument that foreign persons, in areas where most of them are trying to kill our military personnel, are entitled to be represented by treasonous doofuses in American courts...

10
posted on 10/11/2007 3:11:11 PM PDT
by Publius6961
(MSM: Israelis are killed by rockets; Lebanese are killed by Israelis.)

One one hand, they said it was a war and a quagmire. Then when the surge cuts violence 50%, they say wait theres no war so why are security guards shooting people and they go after them.
Ambushes happen fast, the guards have to do whatever is deemed appropriate until all the nutjobs in that country are dead.

15
posted on 10/11/2007 5:33:05 PM PDT
by omega4179
(Was one of them named Mohammed?)

The CCR is a Communist Party creation, coming about as a project of the CPUSA-controlled, marxist dominated National Lawyers Guild (congressionally cited as a CPUSA front). It was created by William Kunstler, Arthur Kinoy, Peter Weiss, possibly CPer Morton Stavis, etc, from the law firm of Kunstler, Kinoy, Stavis and Weiss, and from other CPers in the NLG.

It was created to bring in New Left lawyers and legal workers who were not CP members nor necessarily members of the NLG, then, in the 60’s, a CP/Marxist controlled operation.

Members of another key CPUSA legal front, the National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, also were involved with CCR.

Among CCR’s leaders have been Michael Ratner, a registered agent for Castro and avowed Marxist; Ron Daniels, a black marxist extremist who has just created a new radical front; and Marilyn Clements, from the Hanoi Lobby and Anti-Defense Lobby and pro-Sandinista lobby; and others whose records show their affinity for communist causes in the US and around the world (El Salvador, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Communist Yugoslavia/Milosevic, as well as being anti-Colombia, anti-Israel, and against all anti-terrorism programs).

Older reports on the CCR were published in the Congressional Record in the 1970’s and possibly early 1980’s by Rep. Larry McDonald (D-Ga), sometimes in Human Events weekly, and other conservative publications, including the old Pink Sheet on the Left/American Sentinel.

I would think these traitorous scum would have to use the iraqi courts. Those alleged victims don’t have any right, nor does this group, to use our court system paid for by the tax payer to explore fishing derbys.

I wonder how the fair and balanced CCR is doing with the lawsuit against the guys who ambushed these Blackwater contractors? </sarcasm>

MARCH 31, 2004 : (FALLUJAH, IRAQ : BLACKWATER CONTRACTORS ARE AMBUSHED, KILLED AND THEIR BODIES DESECRATED; ELSEWHERE A BOMB KILLS 5 US SOLDIERS ) Four American civilians working as security contractors were ambushed and killed in Fallujah last Wednesday [March 31, 2004]. Their bodies were burned, mutilated and dragged through the streets; two were hanged from a bridge. In a separate attack the same day, five U.S. soldiers died when a bomb exploded under their armored vehicle near Fallujah.---- "Fallujah leaders set defiant tone ," By Kevin Johnson, USA TODAY , Posted 4/4/2004

1960s : (NCPPF IS FOUNDED TO PROVIDE LEGAL SUPPORT FOR WEATHER UNDERGROUND, FALN & BLA - [See SAMI AL ARIAN, AMC, ALAMOUDI] ) The National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom, or NCPPF, was founded in the 1960s to provide legal support to New Left terrorists in the Weather Underground, the Puerto Rican FALN and the Black Liberation Army -------"Undermining war on terror : Muslim groups weakening fed laws under guise of protecting civil liberties," World Net Daily, March 10, 2003 via 24 posted on 11/01/2004 9:56:32 PM PST by piasa ****** Sami al-Arian & Abdurahman al-Amoudi : [Sami] Al-Arian is also chairman of the National Coalition for the Protection of Political Freedom (NCPPF), a legal-aid group based in New York for U.S. and foreign terrorist causes (see "Domestic Front in the War on Terror," December 17, 2001). [Abdurahman] Alamoudi's AMC is a leading member of the NCPPF. -- "Supporters of Hamas and Hezbollah File Suit Against Bush," by Michael Waller, Insight on the News, July 17, 2002 23 posted on 11/01/2004 9:52:04 PM PST by piasa

[I would think these traitorous scum would have to use the iraqi courts.]

Good point that raises serious questions: What jurisdiction are these mercenaries operating under? Whose system of checks and balances are they constrained by? Not the UCMJ's. Not the U.S. Constitution.

We can not afford to loose in Iraq - but this use of mercenaries to implement foreigh policy is a dangerous precedent to be setting.

Among other things, the use of mercenaries creates the perception that the U.S. military is too weak to meet our objectives.

Is that the image we want to project to our enemies?

25
posted on 10/11/2007 11:21:59 PM PDT
by VxH
(One if by Land, Two if by Sea, and Three if by Wire Transfer)

1990 : (ABDUL RAHMAN ALAMOUDI FOUNDS THE AMC-— See NCPPF) The AMC (American Muslim Council) was founded in 1990 by Abdurahman Alamoudi, a veteran operative for Saudi-backed political-action organizations, including the SAAR Foundation, which was raided by federal agents for alleged terrorist financing.
According to national-security specialists, the AMC has a long and consistent history in the United States of promoting terrorist causes or linked groups  many of which are unrelated to Islam or to the Arab-Israeli conflict. An early president of the executive board of the AMC was Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown, who was twice on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list. As a 1960s radical, Brown threatened to assassinate Lady Bird Johnson when she was first lady of the United States. He now is serving a life sentence in a Georgia prison for the 2000 murder of Fulton County Sheriff’s Deputy Ricky Kinchen. -”Undermining war on terror : Muslim groups weakening fed laws under guise of protecting civil liberties,” World Net Daily, March 10, 2003
********
Sami al-Arian & Abdurahman al-Amoudi : [Sami] Al-Arian is also chairman of the National Coalition for the Protection of Political Freedom (NCPPF), a legal-aid group based in New York for U.S. and foreign terrorist causes (see “Domestic Front in the War on Terror,” December 17, 2001). [Abdurahman] Alamoudi’s AMC is a leading member of the NCPPF.
— “Supporters of Hamas and Hezbollah File Suit Against Bush,” by Michael Waller, Insight on the News, July 17, 2002
23 posted on 11/01/2004 9:52:04 PM PST by piasa

1991 : (ABDURAHMAN ALAMOUDI CREATES AMAF-VAC- See MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD) [Abdurahman ] Alamoudi created the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council (AMAFVAC). Its purpose: to certify Muslim chaplains hired by the military. Qaseem Uqdah, a former AMC official and ex-Marine gunnery sergeant, headed AMAFVAC. ———Statement of J. Michael Waller , Annenberg Professor of International Communication , Institute of World Politics , Before the Subcommittee on Terrorism, Technology and Homeland Security, Senate Committee on the Judiciary , 14 October 2003 , via FR thread “TERRORIST RECRUITMENT AND INFILTRATION IN THE UNITED STATES: PRISONS AND MILITARY AS AN OPERATIONAL BASE. “

MARCH 1991 : (EXEC DIRECTOR OF THE US ARMED FORCES BOARD OF CHAPLAINS MEETS WITH DELEGATION FROM THE AMC - ABDURAHMAN ALAMOUDI URGED THE US MILITARY TO CREATE AN ISLAMIC CHAPLAINCY CORPS) In March 1991, Colonel Meredith Stanley, Executive Director of the US Armed Forces Board of Chaplains, met with a delegation from the American Muslim Council. The meeting was arranged to allow the AMC to air concerns of US soldiers stationed in Saudi Arabia. At the meeting, AMC founder Abdurahman Alamoudi a reputed Muslim Brotherhood member who held a Yemeni passport, and who would not (fraudulently, according to prosecutors) become a US citizen until 1996— urged the US military to create an Islamic Chaplaincy corps in response to the rapidly increasing numbers of Muslims in the US military ranks.
The surge in American Muslim soldiers to which Alamoudi was referring occurred during the first Gulf War, and came largely at the hands of radical Wahhabi agents operating at US army bases in Saudi Arabia with the permission of US Military officers. In an interview with the Saudi-owned London weekly al-Majallah, Canadian Communist-turned-Wahhabi Bilal Philips revealed that he was employed by the Saudi military and put in charge of setting up a “Saudi Camp for Cultural Information” at the US army barracks in Al-Khubar, Saudi Arabia and at least two other US camps. Philips claims that in the five months after Iraqi forces withdrew from Kuwait, his operatives converted 3000 American soldiers to Islam, and that “a considerable number of US officers and men asked us to deliver such lectures...the US Army welcomed our work.” Demonstrating the typical Wahhabi worldview, Philips told al-Majallah that, Western culture, led by the United States, is the enemy of Islam.
-——— “Pentagon Madrassas,” By Evan McCormick, FrontPageMagazine.com, December 2, 2003, http://www.frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=11063

1993 : (ABDULRAHMAN ALAMOUDI’S AMC SPINS OFF THE AMAF&VAC, AND ALSO THE NIPF - THE EFFORT TO INSTALL RADICAL MUSLIM CHAPLAINS INSIDE THE US ARMED FORCES AND THE US PRISON SYSTEM BEGINS - See MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD) Journalist Mary Jacoby, who reports on domestic Islamist networks for the [liberal rag] St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, tells Insight that Alamoudi spearheaded efforts to install radical Muslim chaplains inside the U.S. Armed Forces and the prison system. In 1993, through his American Muslim Council (AMC), he spun off the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council, one of three Islamic organizations to certify chaplains for the military. That same year, according to a pro-Alamoudi briefing published by aljazeerah.info, “AMC supported the launching of ... the National Islamic Prison Foundation.” The purpose, counterterrorism experts say, was to take over Islamic chaplain programs and install more militant Muslims to indoctrinate inmates inside the U.S. prison system and network them after their release back into society. Sources close to the federal investigations tell Insight that more arrests are expected. ———— “Alamoudi Received Cash From Libyan ‘Jihad Fund’,” J. Michael Waller , Insight Magazine, Oct. 13, 2003

JULY 2002 : (SAMI AL ARIAN IS CHAIRMAN OF THE NY-BASED NCPPF aka NATIONAL COALITION TO PROTECT POLITICAL FREEDOM; ABDURAHMAN AL-AMOUDI’S AMC aka AMERICAN MUSLIM COUNCIL IS A LEADING MEMBER OF THE NCPPF) [Sami] Al-Arian is [as of July 2002] also chairman of the National Coalition for the Protection of Political Freedom (NCPPF), a legal-aid group based in New York for U.S. and foreign terrorist causes (see “Domestic Front in the War on Terror,” December 17, 2001). Alamoudi’s AMC is a leading member of the NCPPF.
— “Supporters of Hamas and Hezbollah File Suit Against Bush,” by Michael Waller, Insight on the News, July 17, 2002

* NCPPF : IFCO does not limit its activity to pro-Castro factions, though. Its management maintains relationships with extremist Islamist groups as well. [IFCO’s Exec Director Lucius] Walker travels frequently to Iraq, usually alongside Ramsey Clark. IFCO is a member of ANSWER Steering Committee.) Bernstein is a member of the American Muslim Councils campaign against the use of secret evidence. [co-organizer of WILPF’s Sister-to-Sister Cuba project Marilyn]Clement met with Palestinians during a WILPF solidarity conference in May 2002. IFCO is also a fiscal sponsor of the National Coalition to Protect Political Freedom (NCPPF). The co-founder of NCPPF was the recently indicted terrorist financier Sami Al-Arian. ——— “Not In Our Name and the World Wide Terrorism Web: The “Peace” Movement’s Trojan Horse.,” By Michael Tremoglie, FrontPageMagazine.com, Wednesday, March 19, 2003

The Flying Tigers are considered by some to be a mercenary force- they were paid per kill though the manner of payment was hazy. They were paid per month too though it's hard to be sure if it was nationalist China doing the paying or if it was simply through China they were being paid. What they were doing was in China's interest, it's true, but also in ours. Were they Chinese-employed American mercs or American agents working in China, or both? Hard to say, but either way they were led by a guy who wasn't in it for money.

Unlike the coldhearted merc image though there was no chance these same guys would have been available for the Japanese to hire, just as there's no chance today that Blackwater is going to seek employment from Zawahiri or Tehran if they lose their job with us. Hardly what we could call mercenary.

I should add that American citizens engaged in privateering from earlier eras don't fit the def of mercenaries, either, because they are not foreign disinterested parties willing to fight for anyone willing to pay. I shouldn't have lumped them in with mercs.

Blackwater is not a mercenary organization, any more than were the seabees of WW2, who were early on skilled civilians in the construction industry, etc, hastily "made official military" on paper when hostilities broke out so they could bear arms in a legit way under the rules of war and not be shot as "unlawful" combatants. Of course they became genuine trained though often "overaged, less than fit" military -over some objections from existing military officials - because it was a necessity. We had to have their skills.

Like Blackwater, the modern US Navy, Coast Guard, Army, Air Force, Peace Corps, diplomats, congressmen, etc, are paid volunteers fighting in their respective ways for their country - or are at least expected to do so. Blackwater employees are US citizens, not armed foreigners with no dog in the fight other than an interest in a paycheck for each engagement. Blackwater won't work for al Qaeda or Iran or Syria or N Korea or just for any highest bidder... never against us.

I wish I could say that about our liberal politicians and the UN officials who were bought off by Saddam Hussein and paid to lobby for the interests of Baathist Iraq.

If we are truly concerned about looking weak to our enemies we should turn our attention to the pathetic collection of Congressional surrender-monkies and appeasement-whores who practice their crude, pandering rogue diplomacy abroad. Lastly, at no point did I say or imply we are the British.

The colonel was furious. "Can you believe it? They actually drew their weapons on U.S. soldiers." He was describing a 2006 car accident, in which an SUV full of Blackwater operatives had crashed into a U.S. Army Humvee on a street in Baghdad's Green Zone. The colonel, who was involved in a follow-up investigation and spoke on the condition he not be named, said the Blackwater guards disarmed the U.S. Army soldiers and made them lie on the ground at gunpoint until they could disentangle the SUV. ...

Unlike nearly everyone else who enters the Green Zone, said an American soldier who guards a gate, Blackwater gunmen refuse to stop and clear their weapons of live ammunition once inside. One military contractor, who spoke anonymously for fear of retribution in his industry, recounted the story of a Blackwater operative who answered a Marine officer's order to put his pistol on safety when entering a base post office by saying, "This is my safety," and wiggling his trigger finger in the air. "Their attitude was, 'We're f---ing security; we don't have to answer to anybody'."

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